Japan's National Team

The Japanese national team played its first international football match on May 9, 1917, losing 5-0 to China. At that time, the only other teams in East Asia were China and the Philippines (though they would be joined later by some "colonial" squads, such as a team from the Dutch East Indies and one from India) and they played less frequently than once a year. By the mid 1930s, Japan was acquitting itself well on the football field, but by the late 1930s war intervened, and Japan would not take part in another international match until 1951.

Following the war, the Japanese national team was relatively insignificant, even in Asia, prior to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. However, the strong popularity of football matches at the Olympics prompted greater interest in the sport, and more concerted efforts to develop the level of competition in Japan, including the creation of a domestic, semi-professional league. In 1968, against even the wildest expectations of promoters, Japan won the bronze medal at the Mexico Olympics. For a nation whose achievements were still very modest in nearly all sports, this performance elevated the status of the national team. Unfortunately, interest and financial support waned from the 1970s, and were remained concentrated at the high school and university level. Thus, while the Olympic team had respectable performances several times following its 1968 feat, it would be another thirty years before the country would qualify for the World Cup.

Japan's achievements on the world stage, therefore, can only be taken seriously from about 1981, when Keiji Mori (the former General Secretary of the JFA) took over as coach. Mori would remain at the helm for five years, and under his guidance, Japan became one of the top teams in Asia, led by players such as Hiromi Hara, Koji Kimura and the Hashiratani brothers. After Mori stepped down in 1986, and following two brief periods under coaches Ishii and Yokoyama, Hans Ooft was appointed as the first foreign coach of the national team. Ooft had a great deal of success building a solid foundation for the national team, and enjoyed one of the most successful stretches of any coach of the National Team. However, tragedy would cut short his reign, when the team missed out on qualifying for the 1994 World Cup only due to an injury-time goal by Iraq in the final qualifying match. Having carried the hopes of the nation to the highest level ever, Ooft coud not survive the tremendous disappointment of this heartbreaking loss, and he was fired just 12 days later.

Fortunately, the "Agony at Doha", as it came to be known, helped spur the country to greater efforts to develop its national team. In 1980, coach Emerson Falcao replaced Ooft for a brief, though reasonably successful stint in 1994. However, Falcao found it difficult to adapt to the political games played behind the scenes at the JFA. Since Ooft had been in charge for such a long time, he had become accustomed to these backroom games, while Falcao, with no knowledge of Japan or Japanese, was out of his depth despite reasonable success on the field. In 1994, the league decided to appoint a Japanese coach, and Shu Kamo took the reins.

Kamo's career lasted three years, and was fairly successful, but in the qualifying matches for the 1998 World Cup, a few weak performances left Japan in danger of missing qualification once again. Kamo took the fall for what was probably more a question of poor chemistry among some of the players, and was replaced by his assistant, Takeshi Okada. Okada sorted out the personnel problems, benching two players that he (and many others) recognised as troublemakers -- Kazu Miura and Tsuyoshi Kitazawa. While this move succeeded in carrying Japan through to the World Cup, the two players had very strong fan support and political pull with many top members of the JFA. Okada succeeded in keeping Kazu and Kitazawa on the bench because the team was winning, but once Japan was bounced from the WC1998 without a single win, the vendettas accumulated during his brief reign were carried out, and Okada faced the axe.

Phillippe Troussier took the reins in late 1998, and spend much of his time negotiating the difficult politics of the JFA. After some initial difficulties and rumours of his imminent replacement, which stemmed as much from his ham-handed relations with the JFA as his results on the field, he managed to prove his value with a victory in the Asia Cup 2000. Troussier was fortunate in having a far better pool of talent than any of his predecessors, but was always criticised for "curious" player selections, as well as his arrogant treatment of players, the media, and fans alike. Nevertheless, his approach to "total football" and his insistence on having all players be capable of filling more than one position on the field seemed to be a good match with the Japanese temperment and playing style. The team has matured well under Troussier's tutelage, but despite a positive performance that saw them get through the first round of the 2002 World Cup with an undefeated record, the team collapsed in the round of 16, thanks in part to some typically "Troussiesque" player selections and game stratgegy, which caused the team to perform below their abilities in the match against Turkey.

Following Troussier's departure in 2002, the JFA appointed the legendary Brazil midfielder Zico to take the reins of the national team. A well-known and well-liked figure in Japan, Zico came into the job with a good understanding of the pool of talent available, and a fair amount of goodwill, but his detractors increased in number and vociferousness as the years passed. Like Troussier, he achieved his greatest results in the first two years, but thereafter seemed unable to change with the times. Many of the players who had formed the core of his team for four years began to lose their sharpness, yet Zico was unable to change with the times and this resulted in an underwhelming performance at the 2006 World Cup. At the end of the day, Zico contributed a number of positives to Japanese football, particularly the emphasis on having players think for themselves and respond to match conditions as they arose, rather than simply performing fixed roles. While this did help Japanese players become a bit more "mature", in the end Zico's lack of vision and flexibility prevented his team from achieving the sort of success that fans have come to expect.

Following the national team's failure to advance from the pool round at World Cup 2006, fans were understandably eager for a changing of the guard. That began in July 2006, with the appointment of Ivica Osim as head coach. The veteran Bosnian coach has years of experience coaching in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, and his success in taking Jugoslavia to the quarterfinals in 1990 was just the start of his many successes both at the international level and as a club coach. Following the rigid discipinarian regime of Troussier and the artistic but technically lax style of Zico, Osim brought a much more "intellectual" style which tried to find the middle ground between the styles used by his two predecessors -- flexible enough to encourage individual artistry, but structured and regimented enough to prevent the sort of malaise that developed at the tail end of the Zico era.

Unfortunately, despite some early hints of progress, Osim was felled by a stroke in November 2007, and was unable to remain at the helm of the national team. His place was taken by Takeshi Okada, the man who seems to make a habit of stepping in when other, older coaches fall short. This time, Okada had a much longer period to build a team in his own image, and he also benefitted from the base that had been established by both Osim and Zico before him. Under Okada's direction, Japan qualified for its fourth consecutive World Cup, in South Africa in 2010.

For more information on past coaches or individual match results, click on one of the history links in the left column.